It is that time of year again. The time for joyous, holiday fun with
family and friends, lights and decorations, and good old fashioned
Christmas comedy movies. Fortunately, "Bad Santa" is not going to be a
holiday classic.

Billy Bob Thornton stars as Willie Stokes, a shopping mall Santa Claus
and an utter drunk. Tony Cox plays his elf companion, Marcus. The duo
works at a shopping mall for 30 days during the holiday season. They
use that time to scope out the security scene and wait for Christmas
Eve night. On that night they defeat the shopping mall's security
system and rob the joint. Marcus steals from the items on the floor
that have been listed out for him by his girlfriend, while Stokes works
on cracking the safe.

After the job, Stokes attempts to retire to Miami. However, he ends up
wasting his stolen money and drinking more than ever. Marcus calls
Stokes' lazy self to Phoenix, for their next holiday shopping mall
scam. The filmmakers did an okay job of getting to this point of the
film. It did take them a little too long, about 25 minutes into the
film. However, this is where the film goes down the drain.

The entire middle of the film had some plotlines buried deep inside it,
but they were never fully realized, and thus the film could have just
skipped right to the end.

The middle of the film comprises of a semi-retarded kid who thinks
Stokes really is Santa Claus, a bunch of foul-mouthed eruptions by
Stokes, alcoholism beyond belief, a sexy bartender, a less-than-ethical
shopping mall head of security, and…that's about it.

The thing I can't get past is how the filmmakers can get away with
thinking a "cancel" button exists on an alarm pad. I have never seen an
alarm with a cancel function unless you re-type the code into the pad.
But I guess the whole movie wouldn't work without that premise.

I must say the film did have a semi-clever ending.
At the very least it was not a Hollywood cliché ending.

There were about three highlights to the entire film. First, there was
the scene between Gin (Bernie Mac), the shopping mall's head of
security and Willie Stokes and Marcus. Marcus tries to negotiate with
Gin on the amount of money Gin will receive from the robbery. Gin wants
half, and Marcus starts at 30 and goes to 33 and then 33 and a third,
40, etc. It is a difficult one to explain, but trust me; it's a laugh
riot.

The second highlight is the boxing scene between the semi-retarded kid
(Brett Kelly), Stokes and Marcus. They proceed to take turns kicking
each other in the nuts and falling on the ground. While it is complete
stupidity, it is one of those scenes that are so dumb it's funny.

The final highlight is Lauren Graham, who plays Sue, the sexy
bartender. She only has a few scenes, but she shines brightly. As shown
in "Gilmore Girls", she has an on-screen personality the captures your
complete attention.

The video quality was fairly good. The image was a bit soft, and at
times looks out of focus. The colors decent, but were not as vibrant as
most Blu-ray films. The biggest drawback to this Blu-ray transfer was
the lack of depth. The sub-par contrast created more of a
two-dimensional look to the film. Overall, the film was not plagued
from jaggies or dot crawl and is definitely better than the DVD
transfer.

The audio is presented in an Uncompressed PCM 5.1 format. The film was
predominately dialogue based, but there were several moments with
discreet sound effects, which were well placed. The surrounds however,
lacked a good ambience track. The dialogue track was mixed a little
low, and lacks that EQ'd sweet spot in the vocals, but was by no means
difficult to hear.

This Blu-ray edition contains an Unrated Cut and a Director's Cut of
the film, but no original theatrical cut. The unrated version present
on the Blu-ray, with a running time of 98 minutes, is the same as that
on the Badder Santa DVD edition. The Director's Cut has a running time
of 88 minutes and closely resembles the "Bad Santa" DVD edition. For
the purposes of this review, the unrated cut was used.

There are a couple special features that are exclusive to the Blu-ray
disc. First there is the standard Movie Showcase, which takes you to
the creator's favorite scenes. And the second exclusive feature is an
Interview with Roger Ebert, Director Terry Zwigoff, and editor Robert
Hoffman. Neither of these bonus features is anything special and can be
skipped.

The Blu-ray disc also contains the original DVD features, which were
not re-mastered into high-definition. First there are three
deleted/alternate scenes. The funniest one by far (and perhaps the best
part of the entire disc) is the deleted scene with Sarah Silverman.
There is also a "Behind the Scenes" featurette, "Badder Santa" Gag
Reel, and Outtakes. The Gag Reel, outtakes, and alternate scenes are
all redundant of each other. The Behind the Scenes featurette is not
very insightful. The final bonus feature is an audio commentary (only
available when watching the Director's Cut).

Bar-none, "Bad Santa" ranks at the bottom of the barrel for Christmas
movies and probably of all movies in general. I would rather have to
watch the "Home Alone" trilogy on loop for a week straight than sit
through "Bad Santa" again. It is not a stretch to say that this film is
anti-Christmas. Most Christmas films arrive at the Christmas spirit by
the end of it, but this one never comes close. If you are into foul
language movies with a long, drawn out, simplistic plot then by all
means get this film. I would suggest renting first though.